Fabricated savory snack items include a wide variety of food products including chips, puffed dough articles and crackers. Processed snack foods are generally provided to the consumer in a ready-to-eat form. Food snacks are generally eaten separately from regular meals or used to supplement a meal.
Snacks such as potato crisps, corn chips and tortilla chips are particularly popular consumer snack products. In the case of farinaceous snacks, starch-based materials such as potato flakes are commonly reconstituted to form a dough sheet and then pieces are fabricated therefrom. These fabricated pieces are then immersed in a frying fat or oil or baked in an oven or an extruder.
It is well-known in the art of snacks manufacture to apply a seasoning onto farinaceous snacks in order to add modify the taste and/or appearance of the snack product. Besides spices, herbs and flavors also vegetables such as onion, red bell pepper and tomato have been incorporated in savory snack products as an ingredient of a seasoning mix that is applied onto the surface of the snack product.
It is also known to incorporate vegetables into fabricated snacks products. U.S. Pat. No. 5,264,238, for instance, describes a method for manufacturing a snack food comprising the steps of preparing the paste of a ground or pulverized natural ingredient selected from the group consisting of vegetables, fruits, beans and seaweeds, and then drying the paste to give a snack food having a moisture content ranging from 1 to 6% by weight and a bulk density ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 g/ml. The examples of the US patent describe the manufacture of snack products containing appreciable levels of a single vegetable, e.g. spinach, onion or carrot.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,110,613 describes a process for preparing snack chips comprising the steps of:    (a) mixing a starch material with water to form moist starch agglomerates comprising from about 25% to about 55% water by weight;    (b) mixing the moist starch agglomerates with a dry starch material containing not more than about 20% water by weight to form an agglomerate/starch composite;    (c) forming the agglomerate/starch composite into chip-like pieces; and    (d) cooking the pieces until they are crisp, wherein the cooking process is selected from the group consisting of baking, frying, and combinations thereof.
It is observed in the US patent that, if desired, up to 9% by weight, preferably 2% to 6% by weight, of the dry starch material can be replaced by non-potato food pieces which include, but are not limited to, parsley; chives, garlic or garlic skins; white, red, green, or yellow onions or onion skins; tomatoes or tomato skins; carrots; dill; broccoli; red or green peppers or pepper skins; or mixtures thereof. It is further said that the non-potato food pieces may be of any shape, but that it is preferable that the pieces have the dimensions of between 0.002-0.500 inch (0.005-1.27 cm). According to the US patent adding these ingredients can improve the taste, appearance and texture of the snack chips. They can also aid in the escape of steam from the dry portions of the snack chips during cooking, thereby preventing puffing and promoting a crunchy texture.
Although at present a large variety of fabricated snack products can be found on the supermarket shelves, there is a need for new snack products, notably snack products that outperform the existing snack products in terms of nutritional profile and that in terms of taste, appearance and texture are at least as good as existing snacks. In addition, there is a need for snack products that do not contain artificial coloring and/or artificial flavoring.